Lack of details frustrates police officer's widow

Tracy JordanOf The Morning Call

The widow of the Easton police officer fatally shot in the city police station last month is hurting.

Her husband, Jesse Sollman, is dead. Her two children, 6-year- old Savannah and 3-year-old Jacob, no longer have a father. And until Wednesday, Carin Sollman said, she had no idea how she would provide for them.

Sollman said no one from the administration has contacted her in the nearly three weeks since her husband's death to discuss his benefits.

"My husband was shot in the back, and no one has told me anything," Sollman said. "And I really want to make that clear, because I know the city has been telling you they have kept me informed. But they have not."

State police investigators and city officials have not released any details about the March 25 shooting.

Sollman expressed her frustration with the lack of contact from city officials as "hurtful." She said not only have they not kept her up to date about the status of benefits, but she has not been informed of the circumstances surrounding her husband's death.

"I understand I need to be patient until the investigation is completed," Sollman said, "but I haven't been told anything."

She talked about her feelings during a phone interview after the city's Police Pension Board met Wednesday to approve her husband's pension, based on the standard formula used when any officer leaves the force -- 50 percent of the previous year's base salary.

The meeting, held in City Hall, was hastily scheduled Tuesday after the city received notice that Sollman had hired an Allentown attorney who already has won multimillion-dollar court settlements in lawsuits filed against the Easton and Bethlehem police departments.

Attorney John P. Karoly Jr. accused city officials in a two-page letter of failing to act on requests from Sollman for information regarding her husband's pension and health benefits.

However, City Council and administration officials have defended their response to his death.

Besides planning public memorial ceremonies and attending his funeral service two weeks ago, city officials said, they also have been exhaustively researching ways to provide Sollman's family with the maximum financial benefits possible, while also contending with the crisis caused by the Delaware River flooding April 3.

After learning of Karoly's involvement Tuesday, city officials released estimates of the benefits.

"Prior to then, I had no idea when I was going to get any money or how much the money was going to be," Sollman said. "Prior to that, I have been in contact with individual officers from the union, and they told me they are working on it."

Sollman said police union officials also told her the city would stop paying full medical benefits in May.

"After that, they weren't sure what was going to happen," she said. "I nearly vomited, because how can that be?"

City Council voted Tuesday at its first meeting since the police officer's death to have the city continue paying for his family's health benefits until all benefit issues are resolved.

According to the discussion at the pension board meeting, which Sollman said she was not invited to attend, the annual pension payments for the rest of her life will total $24,477.

In addition, she will receive workers compensation benefits of about $37,232 a year, bringing the total annual payments to $61,709. The workers comp benefits will be discontinued if she remarries.

According to city records, Sollman earned $55,242 with overtime last year.

The state, federal and city governments will provide one-time death benefits totaling nearly $400,000.

The Fraternal Order of Police Washington Lodge 17 labor union is working with the administration to increase the pension benefits, possibly by posthumously promoting Jesse Sollman to lieutenant and raising the percentage of the pension benefit to 100 percent of his salary.

"I think that's a reasonable request," Sollman said. "I have a 6- year-old and 3-year-old and I'm 36, and I don't have a husband anymore."